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Full-Text Articles in Architecture
Precast/Prestressed Concrete Truss-Girder For Roof Applications, Peter S. Samir
Precast/Prestressed Concrete Truss-Girder For Roof Applications, Peter S. Samir
Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Steel trusses are the most popular system for supporting long span roofs in commercial buildings, such as warehouses and aircraft hangars. There are several advantages of steel trusses, such as lightweight, ease of handling and erection, and geometric flexibility. However, they have some drawbacks, such as high material and maintenance cost, and low fire resistance. In this paper, a precast concrete truss is proposed as an alternative to steel trusses for spans up to 160 ft. without intermediate supports. The proposed design is easy to produce and has lower construction and maintenance costs than steel trusses. The proposed design is …
Precast Concrete Insulated Wall Panel Corbels Without Thermal Bridging, Mohamed Elkady
Precast Concrete Insulated Wall Panel Corbels Without Thermal Bridging, Mohamed Elkady
Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
The common practice in corbel design is to block out the insulation in order to provide a solid concrete area at the corbel location. This connection practice results in thermal bridging, which significantly reduces the energy performance of the panel. For example, the PCI Design Handbook indicates that the reduction in thermal resistance caused by a solid part with an area equal to 9% of the total panel surface area is as high as 42%. This paper presents a discussion of a new concept for corbel design of insulated wall panels with the thermal break totally preserved. Two different designs …
Multi-Objective Time-Cost Optimization Using Cobb-Douglas Production Function And Hybrid Genetic Algorithm, Zhigang Shen, Ashkan Hassani, Qian Shi
Multi-Objective Time-Cost Optimization Using Cobb-Douglas Production Function And Hybrid Genetic Algorithm, Zhigang Shen, Ashkan Hassani, Qian Shi
Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications
Existing research on construction time-cost tradeoff issues rarely explore the origin of the crashing cost. Crashing cost function was either assumed without much justification, or came from historical data of some real projects. As a result the conclusions of the papers can hardly be used to guide allocations of labor and equipment resources respectively. The authors believe Cobb-Douglas function provides a much-needed piece to modeling the cost functions in the construction time-cost tradeoff problem during the crashing process. We believe this new perspective fills a gap of existing time-cost tradeoff research by considering project duration, labor and equipment cost as …
Effects Of Reverberation And Noise On Speech Comprehension By Native And Non-Native English-Speaking Listeners, Z. Ellen Peng, Lily M. Wang, Siu-Kit Lau, Adam M. Steinbach
Effects Of Reverberation And Noise On Speech Comprehension By Native And Non-Native English-Speaking Listeners, Z. Ellen Peng, Lily M. Wang, Siu-Kit Lau, Adam M. Steinbach
Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications
Previous studies have demonstrated the negative impact of adverse signal-to-noise-ratios on non-native English-speaking listeners' performance on speech recognition using recall tasks, as well as implied that comprehension skills were more impaired than recognition skills under reverberation and noise. The authors have themselves previously conducted a pilot study on three native and three non-native Englishspeaking listeners to examine the effects of reverberation and noise using speech comprehension tasks. Those results suggested that speech comprehension performance is worse under longer reverberation times (RT), and that a longer RT is more detrimental to speech comprehension by non-native listeners than native listeners. This paper …
Acoustic Tweets And Blogs: Using Social Media In An Undergraduate Acoustics Course, Lily M. Wang
Acoustic Tweets And Blogs: Using Social Media In An Undergraduate Acoustics Course, Lily M. Wang
Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications
Each fall, the author teaches an undergraduate architectural acoustics course to around 40 third-year architectural engineering students at the University of Nebraska. Beginning in 2011, a social media component was introduced to explore the use of this technology and how it may supplement the students' learning experience. Students were given an opportunity to receive extra credit by using Twitter and/or blogging about course material using a set hashtag (#AE3300) or through the course website. Results were positive, and the author will discuss pros and cons that she has experienced in adding this social media component. Suggestions for future implementations and …